[liberationtech] 15 years later, why can't Johnny still not encrypt?

[coderman]

On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:20 AM, Mrs. Y.
<networksecurityprincess at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> http://www.edge.org/conversation/smart-heuristics-gerd-gigerenzer


your caloric heuristic optimization,
 is my bug.
  (now if only we could patch wetware! ;)


Tempest: perhaps we should clarify incentives.  Johnny has zero
incentive in the modern social world to use crypto, and high barriers
to any interest that does occur.

journalists and human rights workers are motivated like never before,
and likely more sophisticated.  however they still struggle with
technical tools for strong privacy.

my challenge was to the cypherpunks list for digital monies; favorable
selection if there ever was!  yet still not 100% and some contexts
place severe penalties on even a single, innocent failure.



as for the title and research, it does not imply encryption is useless
and should be abandoned.  it does imply that casual, less technical
users (Johnny) need a system which is intuitive, fails safe, and
unambiguously expressive about failures.

any improvement to usability is useful.  we certainly need much
improvement for pervasively employed end-to-end privacy.



best regards,